Hand dysfunction is a common symptom, which may be caused by many conditions such as stroke or traumas resulting in brain injury. A lot of patients suffer from this, and it could seriously affect their life. Stroke alone causes 0.8 million people to become disabled every year in the U.S. There are around 1.5 million stroke survivors annually in China and 80% of them suffer from upper-limb (motor, sensation) dysfunction.
To help the patients to recover, different rehabilitation methods can be employed. One of these methods is known as Active Rehabilitation Exercise, the efficacy of which has been proven in many studies and which has been widely used by doctors and therapists. As a cost-effective solution, a movement tracking system based on an infra-red camera and retro-reflective markers can provide guidance and interaction in natural and intuitive ways. While the patient is doing active rehabilitation exercises, he/she can get guidance and encouragement from a system capable of tracking the motion of the limb and giving real-time feedback.
For such a system, first, patients should wear a garment (usually covered by reflective material) covering their hands or upper limbs, which can be tracked by a special camera (e.g. infrared camera) in the recognition system. Second, they can do exercises under the guidance of demonstration examples shown on the computer screen or other display equipment. Meanwhile their training actions will be tracked by the special camera when they are doing exercises in front of the display screen. At the same time, the system can compare the tracked actions completed by patients with standard ones and give them feedback in order to correct their actions. Finally, the quality of the exercises performed can be estimated in a clinical way. So, in this manner, a long-term exercise and practice plan can help patients recover from hand and upper limb dysfunction.
FIG. 1 shows a training garment for persons with upper limb dysfunction. As shown in FIG. 1, the garment is designed as one piece, making it easy for a patient to put it on. However, in practice, it is mainly suitable for patients in a later-stage of the rehabilitation training, rather than for patients in an early-stage.